Well i have more respect for studio that go for the kind of genre I am lokin for.

Then some acient fame dev that abadoned this genre decades ago.

The one trick pony in 3 burst.

The rumors are they / he wants to, but rather do something else.

In today market it is a rare thing game studio persuit this genre.

There isn't much competition.

So if it become someting similar in quality and lack of polish like prefious games or not feature complete but broken.

I still go to play if there are good point wich destract off the bad point enough. So I can have some fun with it.

With in the FPS genre there so much competition that you come time short to play everything.

I hope that it use a new engine.

That use current gen hardware better.

And the user interface makes avery gameplay aspect it ofer well accesible.

Also decent AI as these kind of games in this genre depends largly on them.

So the key to sucses keep of code base reuse of the non suitable for this genre menu systems. But redesign it to fit this kind of game a lot better.

So I won't ask to offering a huge insane feature creep list. wich just means that dev resource are so thinned out over all features most of all would be half assed implemented. unfinished no polish and posible broken.

I wont mind if it shift to begin 2012 to do it right then rushed it out.

No Mplay. It only make sense if they had done the Singleplayer right. That,t a good base to design a Mplay game from. Wich take out also a bulk part off dev resources.

But maybe they positivly surprise me.

There is nothing wrong with stargates. But it isn't worked out well.

Problem is the trafic and collision with that.

Also there are huge ships wich are great for gate blocking.

Moving around with a fleet of capitalships you gonna loose some of them.

Due this trafic handling problem.

The games may look good and are not doubt technologically very good but they are a completely and utter failure in just about every other aspect. There decision to concentrate on a economical simulation may have been done for good reasons and the games seems to have had some success in Germany, but have never been much of a hit outside of Germany.

I think this is the reason behind the reboot of the X series is to try and appeal too bigger market, unfortunately what has been said about the game so far is not very impressive. What they really need to do is make a complete break from the X series and calling it X rebirth is not a good start.

The X Shuttle (the very first ship in the very first game) was capable (at least initially) of making jumps without a gate before it broke down. It was even mentioned again in the XTended game that it was being worked on. If they could get rid of the gates (at least between star systems), it might help to open the game up a bit.

They are just taking the safest (if unambitious) route but the best thing to do for the X series would have been to put it to rest and start anew without historical baggage. Cramped box sectors, slow speeds, limited view (in vacuum!) and comms distances and a completely uninteresting universe. I have so many complaints you'd think I hate the series but I have played X3 and TC quite a lot 🙂

I disagree,

I dont like economical gaming, as a supporting role is as far as I get. But Xseries do offer alternatives.

The way I played was exploring space with my semi fast starter M5 in search of derelic ships.

There are M4 and M3 out there who are a fortune. then with your derelic M3 start to let the enemy m3 piates bail out and capifate there ship. So no trading needed.

optional set up some sector traders and let them become univesaltraders and at some patch state Utrading is automated.

So played it more as a fighter game captivating other fighters.

X3 TC add after a patch boarding to it. So you can get capitalships

I played it to collect every type of ship. and some more of the kind that suit my needs better.

Except the need of missiles. The new Frigate missile ship M7 variant. Called M7m for boarding and sector clearing eats so much missile.

Tthe need for a missile fab loop. Did not do that before only a single fab or few before.

It's true trading has economical depth that great for trader gamers, but its not a must you have to do. Bit trading is unavoidable. but you can play it more in a combat hunting fashion.

your arguments are based on preference. You have problems with some game design choices. wich is oke. go look for something that don't turn you off.

The main problem with this game are the user interfaces and extreem stupid AI.

plus almost all features aren't worked out well.

Its feels unfinished like feature incomplete alfa. that holding this series back.

That normal for a low production cost game. While It do need triple-A funding doing there thing in 4 to 5 years.

To work out this formula in a more finished and well worked out way with decent amount of polish and quality.

What the realy need is to take what worked well build from there make broken features complete and finished. axed what makes it bad. Seqeulls offer a good head start. And feedback for the game before it.

And where it realy come to more focus on interface design and AI with enough dev time for working out there design and enough polish and quality asurance time.

wich just means 2x the dev time. with Mplay 3 times wich also relate to higher funding and a release in 2013 or later.

That where the real barriers is and why this series isnt that suscesfull as it could be.

As for sucses. a well polished and finished game.

aim for mass market is good. very recognisable by short focus, alergic to manuals and game needs be very accesable.

Also finished and decent polished and bug free-ish.

Gates yes you loose some 100K people. but with above you win multifold of that. double sales.

A good example is Universal combat. does more what you want. But has partly the same crusial problems like Xseries but then there is freelancer a bigger budged game a finshed and polished game wich might be a bigger sucses. Using gate lanes. closer to xseries.

I think Egosoft as a company needs too move on as they have only made one game or 4 different version of one game in the last ten years. And Ihave read that they have had some difficulty getting the last couple of games released. If they ever want to expand the company beyond its current size they are simply going to have to appeal to a bigger market then the current do.

I simple don’t think there is enough variety in the old X games as you will always end up coming back to the trading even if you don’t want start a trading empire. It’s a bottle neck and its something they need to addressed in the new game.

As a player I always feel that Iam pushed in the direction of building of a trading empire and yes you can collect ship or shoot a few pirates but what is supposed to be a sand box game it simple offer too few alternatives to the trading.

As you say the interface needs to better and the features better thought out so why not make a clean break with the past and start afresh, they have the experience.

You may be right maybe it is just a personal preference but for me a space trading game is not just about trading that is only a part of the game, there should always be alternatives in these games.

I just feel the grand epic scope of these games has been lost over the years and been replace by small generic universe connected by jumpgates, where the only thing that changes is a skybox. This is not just a problem with the X games but something which could be said about most of the games made in the last decade.

Yea know I have been playing the x series for about 10 years and there has been issues, X3r didn't run until the first couple of patchs but if they are such an object failures, how come they have been around for 10+ years. I really do not see many game/deveolpers around that long but I could be wrong.

I am a fanboi of the x series and I hope the next itteration is as good as x2 and x3r. I thought x3tc was a wee bit to easy to garner credits. They do have an golden chance to expand on the series with this and I truly hope they do. I dislike the gates also, would prefer the jump engine, but time will tell.

Anyways first time poster here but a lurker for a wee bit.

Bullet

Well I disagree. Sequell are a save bet for investors so. Altho people want orginality the rather play seqeuls.

And orginality bite them in the back. Because we know the extreem sucsesses but not the countless failures.

Doing something realy new is just a big risk. If people like a game they tent to be also very interrested in sequell of it.

Xseries aren't perfect at all. So opertunity to do it a bit or much better job at it.

Have you tried the X-tended TC mod? It's quite hard compared to vanilla 🙂

To be honest I have not. I actually went back to my Reunion game. I should give it a go, they say it changes the whole game.

Bullet

Ok, jumping into the discussion without reading much, My 2c on Egosoft X series:

I bought the original (X-BTF) and played it to the end of the story, as well as X-Tension and, if memory does not fail me, X2. Bought X3 but actually never played it (starfarce didn't help much).

Although the economic side of X was interesting - a definite plus - I always felt that the flight model was broken - it is not so much the gates, but the lack of the sense of being in space. I actually defend the existence of gates (in a quite different context) but I'm not a fan of quadrants.

It would be nice that Egosoft managed to change their basic model and implement a more seamless, continous ad "free" environement. With star systems, not quadrants...

Going by the video, and the marketing blurbs about fast travel, I suspect it will just be more of he same but perhaps without actual gates joining sectors. Rather those lanes of traffic like you see in the SW movies.

Plus, am I the only one who thinks the game is way too colourful? But my biggest concern is whether they have tried to widen the appeal of the game by "dumbing it down", or worse still making it a multi-platform release. If they have gone down that particular route then I suspect they would have pissed away he franchise at that point. And knowing the community of the Egosoft forums very well I would expect a sizable shitstorm to occur!

No I thought it looks like Darkstar 2. 😆

Doubt it will be mult-format unless theirs a Mac/linux version at some point.

I would have said it depends on the aspiration of the company, if they happy being a small PC developer making one game for a niche audience then they wont change much. If they intend to become bigger then they will simple have too make the game appeal to a broader base of game players.

So, X gets a makeover again...

Oh well. They were fun games, though not without their warts.

One of my main gripes is, funnily enough, the economy system. The game uses a metric crapload of resources to track all the commodities and ships moving through space, while actually offering precious little in return for it. Most of the times, the stations are empty, and you have to trek all over the universe to kit out your ship.

I'm not really that much of a station builder - I mostly used them to produce the harder to get items for my ships, and that's mostly because the GOD engine decided to kill a few factories too many. (There are no more ion disruptor forges in my game, and the terran keris drones only exist as a rumor, for example.) So, all of that tracking and "realistic" economy is pretty much lost on me. I assume a more abstract and less system resource hungry system might work just as well, if not better.

The combat also has alwas been a rather weak point. The ship balance has improved, yes, and the AI learned a few tricks, but they still perform abysmally. A single destroyer in the hands of the player can pretty much depopulate the entire universe; and once you're done with eliminating the race(s) of your choice, it pretty much only exists as a trophy gathering dust - outside of the later (random) combat missions, there is nothing out there to justify that much firepower. Due to the mission/ranking progression, most of the smaller ships in turn become useless, since you can't bring a knife to a gunfight if you intend to survive and get paid.

The sectors...weren't that hot, yeah, but at least they worked with the odd way space travel is handled. I'm a bit unsure on how a "gateless" version of X will play out, but I hope it'll cut down NPC travel time.

While we're at NPCs, the Trader Scripts available in-game make things far too easy - they practically play the trading game for you, and they're too damn good at it. In X3:TC, I haven't lost one factory hauler or Universe Trader yet. They don't need protection, a jumpdrive and a checked option and they're pretty damn close to being invulnerable. The cash just rolls in, which I appreciate, but doesn't feel quite right. Trading is pretty boring*, yes, and you can't start a combat career without some serious money for the equipment, but using what basically amounts to a farmbot just feels wrong.

*= While we're at that, there's a reason why it's boring, and that's connected to the ship/commodity design. Remember the older Elite-style games? In order to do profitable trade runs, you had to enter some pretty shady systems, where the locals made a habit out of shooting you for fun and profit. So you basically grabbed a ship that had some decent-sized cargo space, and could outgun the things it couldn't outrun. Effectively trading in X requires a hauler, because the profit per unit is ridiculously low compared to the price of stuff, and all haulers without exception are slow like molasses, handle like a drunk pig on ice and have all the martial prowess of toothless puppy.

What's decidedly worse, there are no high-risk, high-profit areas - money is made by hauling bulk goods over medium distances, or upgrading the price of local abundant resources via a factory. Risks and pirates are few and far in between, and these risks can be further minimized by nuking the pirate stations preemptively, something a M6-Craft can do rather cost-efficient. So, you get Biff, the space trucker instead of Han, the blockade runner.

I'm aware that there's a metric dumpload of mods that adress all kinds of issues, but let's face it: Egosoft has been re-releasing the same basic game for ~4 times within the last 10 years, so you'd expect them to integrate some of the better stuff into the core game at some point, They didn't, at least not to a degree that changed the core game in a recognizable way, so I'm unsure if we'll really see a "rebirth" of the X series or if it's more like X - The Regurgitation.

The game could do with some streamlining and some more career choices.

-Blackthorne

P.S.: I sincerely hope they won't bother with a storyline for this one. Egosoft couldn't tell a compelling story within their games if their funding depended on it.

True, like unfinished so forget polish and bugy.

It a demand and offering ratio. Wich influence price wich is nice.

And wenn stock are staticly low you are experience a hole in the market.

Lots of commodities make sense but still restricted. I would like to have more.

I started the game as trader so might be my game isn't that agressive. But doesn't played it as trader more salvager captivator and ship boarding. And missile sprayin game. No trading.

Only complex loop for my missiles. Never did this before because no missile ships in previous games.

Well you get those super leet fighter gamers. Oh yes this game is for one on one very easy. It's even easy to win from a bigger ship.

But I aint that good at it but even I find it easy. I like a smooth ride but yes this is to smooth. then I like. But no game killer.

Well gate are trouble some for large ships and wing support. But distances well there Seta for.

With a realistic set game it would be even more extreem.

Yes the Universal trader that a nice feature for non traders like me. You need cash because warfare is expensive. MAke extensive trading game very optional.

Well disagree in save space al the basic resource are there so you can save trade with large freighters to get a steady low risk cash flow toward you.

Un save space is where the large profits are. Large freaighter would be unneeded and to slow and make you big target.

High value stuf is mostly illigal and high tech stuf. This the kind of game a tradergamer would do.

Well they did some but of cource the could do a lot more.

And I like to play vanila.

It's a bad sign that mod are needed to fix gameplay.

I never followed story untill the bonus you get after where so interresting to collect. I don't like that.

I play it as a

Exploring salvager.

Pirate hunter and ship collector by captivating.

Moving on to boarding capital ships.

Collecting every ship and use the best for playin.

And a bitsy trading to support my play style.

I see there some new concept art for the game on the X forum, anyone heard any other news about it. ❓

All that I have seen that I missed before is that X Rebirth should be out before years end, so you would think Egosoft would be ramping up the PR engine to get the game out there for the masses to view.

I though the release date was around about September or October in less it been delayed.

kinda strange that they have not said much since the original announcement.

Thought this screenshot was nice, shows off a solar power station.

Looks more like concept art work than screenshots,

Can’t see Egosoft going for such a radical look.

Looks more like a plasma collector rather than a solar array being that close to a star.

That piece of concept ART looks amazing! 😀

Already pre-ordered my copy and I am building a new system at the moment just to run this game and for my design work.

Looking at them pics... why do I get the nasty feeling that the box/cube star systems will be making a return.

That is a in-game shot as far as I could tell in the forums where I found it.

Only time will tell 🙂